as obama's donations stack up for two thousand and twelve how are his failed campaign promises stacking up in. the united states. to get out of those broken promises if the white house is beating around the bush bush human rights watch torture screams heard elsewhere. the libyan people right now you go and we didn't hear it. and spaniards don't want to hear now either at least not at the expense of citizens at home and a country facing fiscal crisis so why haven't americans made this connection yet. there is very little journalism being done. you create some dangerous circumstances

for citizenry for democracy itself and as the media field seems to be changing which team will win out in the end journalism or p.r. and what does this mean for the future of the media. it evening it's wednesday july thirteenth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm lauren lyster and you are watching r.t. well the country you don't have to be a genius to notice that it's in tough economic times as witnessed by unemployment numbers the national debt to name a few examples in fact moody's ratings agency today but the u.s. ratings on review for a downgrade as a result of the failed debt ceiling negotiations president obama reportedly walked out of debt talks with republican lawmakers today now under obama's watch as

president the economy has gotten worse if you take figures such as unemployment as example seven point six percent was that number when he took office now it's at nine point two percent obama and others argue do economy would have been much worse without the actions he's taken in office but who's to say that's pretty difficult to prove or disprove. so given all of this the current situation of the economy why is the president getting so rich or at least his war chest to be a little more accurate it's way beyond expectations let's look at what he's raised obama's reelection campaign has raised eighty six million dollars in the last three months now this is twenty six million dollars more than his campaign was aiming for at this point and if you want to look at it compared to republican contenders it's more than all of them put together they've written from four million dollars each to just over eighteen million bucks in the case of mitt romney now chipping in an average of sixty nine bucks each obama supporters have broken records according to the president's people because the basic. five hundred fifty two thousand four

hundred sixty two people donation to this campaign in the first three months history on the two thousand and eight campaign with a historic number of small dollar every day people making donations of whatever they can afford if you look at that compared to a point four years ago you'll see that this movement is even stronger even stronger but what has obama done to get this kind of increased support if you delivered on his campaign promises and achieved what people hoped let's talk about the war on terror as an example he's pulled a lot of troops out of iraq a war he promised to end but ten thousand troops may stay there the white house is certainly offering them next year to have to continue to be there afghanistan continues though he's announced a drawdown and he promised in the campaign it's worth noting and the mindset that leads to war yet he went to war with libya under his watch the on time obey remains

open and reports of secret prisons continue along with allegations of abuse he has ended the bush era torture practices such as waterboarding but he hasn't ever ordered criminal investigation into allegations of detainees abuse against george w. bush and other senior administration officials now this is something that human rights watch is asking him to do so is laura pitter she's a counterterrorism adviser from human rights watch disappointed well she was in our new york studio earlier to answer that but i first asked her with bush not being in office for a while it's been more than two years what is human rights watch done recently aside from is issue this most recent report to promote their point of view that obama should investigate bush. well this more than a press release is actually one hundred seven page report that builds on our past reporting and also combined with a lot of the information that that has been me made publicly available since our earlier report and yes it calls on the criminal inquiry an investigation into.

the use of torture vice senior level bush administration officials specifically george bush vice president dick cheney secretary of defense don rumsfeld and george tenet head of the cia and it documents a lot of the evidence that was in involves a lot of the things that that the bush administration did in relation to its cia detention program and the rendition of suspects to other countries along with what happened to the detainees during the time that they were in both cia and military custody and human that there's a hundred and seventy pages and it's very comprehensive it's also been chewing out years i'm curious why is this coming out so late. well as i said it it we actually have been reporting on it and we've been documenting evidence for an investigation for many years. and we released this report now because we feel as though it's

just important to make sure the message doesn't get lost that just a few weeks ago for example the obama administration announced that there would be a closure to the durham inquiry which was the real only investigation of the obama administration has done into the past abuses and that inquiry just looked at cia abuses and only against one hundred or so detainees and also it only looked at what these officers did that went beyond what was authorized and the problem is is that what was authorized is what was illegal and so looking at just what went beyond the authorization was never suspicion it was always to too narrow an inquiry it must be remembered that hundreds of other detainees not just one hundred custody were subject to these abuses and you mentioned them were also detained for many years and i see and i and you mentioned that you have called for investigations in the past have you called on the obama administration to investigate george w.

bush and senior administration officials in the past well i guess what's different about this report is we specifically named four individuals for which there was overwhelming amount of evidence regarding their roles in the use of torture so it had more evidences come out since our last report and we added that to our previous reporting as well as including the public admissions on the part of of bush in his memoirs as well as from ones filed i do seriously think that the obama administration will launch a criminal investigation with this latest report and with these calls. well we hope they do but obviously there has been resistance to it and probably will be resistance to it but you know human rights watch reports on abuses world ride wherever there are abuses we call on the governments to investigate and there's no reason why we wouldn't do the same here in the u.s. if the united states has not investigated in the past though and you hope that they

will but they haven't reacted in any way showing that they will launch a serious investigation does this mean that they don't take what you're calling for seriously what i think that they we hope that they will take it seriously that the problem and the reason why it's so important is because it undermines u.s. credibility when they are trying to promote rule of law and human rights issues in other countries if the u.s. doesn't prosecute and investigate their own abuses at home so we feel it's a really important message and one that we will not start making if the united states doesn't investigate then does that discredit your organization what is the point of what you're calling for if the u.s. doesn't act on it well we we call on investigations in many countries and sometimes they don't investigate it doesn't mean that we're not going to stop calling for investigations we also call for a nine eleven type independent nonpartisan commission sort of truth commission in

the report and we also called for the government to seriously look into the possibility of compensating some of the victims records have been i had a lot of the claims that these individuals who were subject to these abuses have made in court not based on the merits of their cases but based on the state secret doctrine but to litigate claim would reveal state secrets at the same time they've in their opinions asked the government to look into the possibility of actually compensating these people so we're going to be pushing for that as well so you push for that in the past. now that's something you were going to be pushing for that. that was laura pitter counterterrorism adviser for human rights watch now finally to easing it is a term that hopefully all of you viewers know by now because we've covered a lot in the federal reserve have done a lot of it is buying u.s. treasuries and mortgage backed securities to pump cash into the con economy which was supposed to help liquidity all of this liquidity was supposed to help with the

economic recovery however critics allege it has devalued the dollar and pumped up corporate cash perhaps but not helped the average joe the first round to remind you was over a trillion dollars then the fed announced quantitative easing to laugh all its six hundred billion dollars and before it expired on june thirtieth this spike criticism that it hasn't worked jim rogers came onto our show and he told me this they will stop to eat too because they've said so many times they have to but then when things start getting worse again you're going to see them come back with q e three they may not call it that they may discuss it they may call it cupcakes who knows what they'll call it but it's coming back a bold prediction he said it is coming back and lo and behold today federal reserve chairman ben bernanke he told congress that a new stimulus program is in the works and they are thinking of another round of monetary easing on the one hand the possibility that the recent economic weakness

to be proved more persistent than expected and it deflation risk might reemerge implying a need for additional policy support. even with the federal funds rate close to zero we have a number of ways in which we could ease financial conditions further so stay tuned you heard it here first and investor jim rogers predicted it here first we'll continue to follow it and see what in fact happens and is expected to happen in the coming days with new plans for a possible quantitative easing the third meanwhile the united states continues its military mission in libya fighting libyan leader moammar gadhafi even though the country is scrambling for cash to pay its bills but other countries taking part in a nato campaign aren't so willing to accept these priorities in spain for example opponents of the war say they were dragged into it under pressure from washington and there has been a public outcry over war which is costing the country money it says it doesn't have spain of course facing

a sovereign debt crisis so given all of the economic hardships in the u.s. you could just name the debt ceiling debate as one example going on why aren't americans doing the same and having the same outcry over libya will earlier i posed a question to david swanson he's campaigner for progressive organization roots action here's his response. the short answer is you are screwed print media is lousy but you know the congress is feeling some pressure against money for the war in libya and if we can work together with the people in spain to push both our governments not to pay for it there may be effective but you know what's unique about the us budget is not the health care of the social security and the debt it's the war in the military we just saw the house of representatives passed a military budget bigger than ever before we've almost doubled it in that we've more than doubled in the past ten years not counting homeland security and energy in state and all the other departments we have i think twenty five percent of

americans in a poll this year think the united states should spend three times the next competing nation on military expenses each year the united states spends about seven times what china spends not counting all those other departments nobody wants that if you put a bill in congress that said the united states can't spend more than three times the next competing nation on its military everybody in the public which would favor it but it would get nowhere with this congress and it's it's not part of the discussion but let's talk about the discussion among the american people because that you see a different connection being made and it's spain i've seen on the street and portugal where people were protesting nato saying our country needs money we don't want that money going to nato we don't want it going to the military here in the united states you don't see that connection as art and being made even though the u.s. spends half of its discretionary spending on defense my favorite clip is going to see any or was you know very strongly correcting her bath saying hey whoa whoa whoa

we have debts and deficits in the u.s. there but libya that's a totally separate thing why isn't there more of a connection well either by the math is it here in the us world one answer is that they never. or the t.v. i mean you have a discussion that includes the right wingers who want to talk about health care and social security those sort of centrist think tankers who want to talk about the recession and the lack of revenue from the recession and the progressive thing takers and economists want to talk about the bush tax cuts that we still call the bush tax cuts that are now being pushed obama tax cuts of course which is right that's a problem but you don't have any professional institution you don't have any communication system to talk against the war machine you just have the peace movement when nobody funds it but what he found i can tell you as someone who's worked in the peace movement for many years nobody funds it if i had a dime for everybody who's emailed me complaining about all the money i get from

george soros i'd be rich i could actually talk to george soros you know but no but nobody does and there's no corporate media in the united states that got that that isn't complicit that isn't making money off the war machine and that goes for rupert murdoch too i mean this is a major crime boss being threatened with parking tickets here this is a guy who pushed who openly confesses to having pushed these wars that's criminal ok let's talk about the media war machine because when this war in libya first broke out the mainstream media characterized these rebels i think it's fair to say that many characterize them as the heroes of democracy championing democracy now recently we've seen a few mainstream articles stories coming out new york times and saying hey maybe these problems aren't such nice people did reporters in the media not know that maybe they weren't such nice people three months ago. i don't think they knew and i don't think they cared or asked for the most part so why do they care now do you

think. it's a good accolade for me well perhaps because it's been going for months and it was supposed to be over in days why bother caring about something that's going to be over in days not weeks perhaps because there actually is resistance in congress at least much agree. her pretense of resistance than we've seen on iraq or afghanistan in the several years and a large part of that is republicans who just hate obama more than they hate peace or justice but but it's it's significant it's a sign of life out of congress and maybe maybe that gives corporate reporters the you know of the room to operate and to begin to question that's an interesting take i want to talk a little bit about the reason why nato went in and the reason why the u.s. why the humanitarian mission and where that stands now russian foreign minister sergei lavrov was the here in our teeth studios and he was doing an interview for both of russia the radio station and this is what he said about the toll of the airstrikes on civilians i want to play that their strokes themselves girl will get

you're going through. some residential what those have been few and it's a cause of concern because the main goal of the resolution is not to shoot they're against was the reason for the civilian population it's exactly the protection of the civilians and the civilians suffering boards through go through forces and from the forces of the coalition. so we think that civilians are suffering because of the coalition and it's something that i've had many people on my show speaking about as well and talking about money to connect the money and the war efforts as you know we're been trying to do this is cost like three hundred sixty eight million dollars that could fund a lot of more productive humanitarian efforts you could argue an example prices for the price of the talaga missiles we've byard the u.s. could have purchased fifty two million mosquito nets to prevent malaria which kills

one million people every year what do you think is as far as the humanitarian actually for this at all anymore i never really believed that but now that's i guess money's being spent waiting to be done about it it's not clear the american public ever believed it the american public has turned against this faster than any previous war which is much to its credit the problem is we don't control our government in washington you know not only has congress never appropriated a dime for war in libya and never authorized it and passed resolutions declaring that it's unauthorized but allowing it to continue but they they voted down in this biggest ever military budget they voted down an amendment from congresswoman barbara lee that said get rid of that five billion dollars slush for and that let's presidents do these things without asking us they voted that down they said leave that in place in case a president wants to do this sort of thing again that's that's reckless and criminal and that's what this president is on there's nothing humanitarian about

bombing people's homes there is nothing to say that that isn't hostilities as the president's legal advisers now argue is absolutely outrageous i want to get this question going for just one more minute if that's ok but speaking of hostilities how much money has to be spent for this to be considered hostilities because we've seen that the congress is asked to move five billion dollars in funds to a lot of it accounts for the high. the millions of dollars that are needed to replace bombs that are dropped in libya you know how much needs to be spent in order for these to qualify as hostilities for the obama administration for the obama administration whatever they name i mean there's no logic to it and they're not following any laws or any presidents when the war powers resolution was passed in one thousand nine hundred eighty three it explicitly clearly intended to cover all military operations so my answer is a single cent and that has been spent as you know much more than that has been

spent it's wars and hostilities this is hostilities dropping bombs on people's homes is hostilities it doesn't matter whether the americans are there on the ground or the americans are back at their desks launching the drones and then going home and committing suicide its hostilities. a single cent all right while a lot more has been spent than a single cent thank you for helping us make sense of that with campaigner for its action david swanson now foreign dignitary was in town today also speaking about the war in libya russian foreign minister sergey lavrov he toured our studios yesterday and today he met with u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton now among the hot issues they also discussed behind closed doors the anti-missile defense shield and the middle east crisis now despite a reset in relations between the u.s. and russia missile defense has remained a sticking point and the prof spoke about what it will take to build better trust when it comes to this issue. this is the importance.

of. mutually acceptable solutions on missile defense. it's we have noted that president obama. has. just confirmed he is ridden as to reach understanding together with mr blair's version of to reach an understanding of common policy and creating a strong political framework which was a little star practical cooperation in this important sphere. now also u.s. adoptions of russian children has been a source of tension between the country's two here's what lavrov said about that we will be going towards. implementing this agreement and this will help us gets rid of the irritants that have seen emerging quite rightfully in the public opinion

connected to the system here of russian children who were adopted in america so working on a new policy there now earlier in the day lavrov met u.s. president barack obama again behind closed doors prior to the needing obama administration confirmed that big key topic of negotiations was the u.s. is projected missile defense shield in europe meanwhile we've been speaking a little bit about the media in the show but where is it heading in the united kingdom rupert murdoch papers are shutting down for no holds barred tactics such as hacking and in the us you could argue the alternative to media struggling for money is cutting costs and becoming increasingly reliant on publicists for information well arty's correspondent christine for southbound that is going to an increasingly new level because hordes of members of the press are leaving their brains and order to join the public service. in. the first person the final edition of the.

newspaper is like the seattle post intelligencer the rocky mountain news and hundreds more have now become relics from the past. slash budgets have stops the presses at newsrooms nationwide. and mass layoffs throughout media have meant far fewer journalists to investigate policy and procedure we're losing a sense of accountability in government and business in our. life lives if we lose journalists who are now asking questions about what's going on and the numbers are particularly dramatic with newspapers where revenue has been cut nearly in half while the journalism industry is shrinking the public relations industry is expanding at one time a one to one ratio between p.r. employees and journalists today that ratio is four to one with p.r.

revenues jumping from three point five billion to eight point seven billion dollars journalists are simply overwhelmed but folks are trying to spin them trying to create their own story you have the public relations folks spin doctors if you will driving it and john nichols along with robert mcchesney wrote a book about it the death and life of american journalism in a sense we are becoming one of the most propagandized countries in the world short staffed news stations often use company video news releases v.n. ours like this one your chances are the first. p.r. described as news the neutral good as gold mimics press releases also often read on the air or posted on the web before any fact checking is done with the focus often on getting it first rather than getting it right good evening everybody breaking news tonight we're cutting into our program with some breaking news we're corporate

and government p.r. departments are filled with former journalists who know how to sell their message they understood how media worked what are. all of those good story as opposed to hype which ward worked for nearly twenty years as a journalist with the philadelphia inquirer but after layoffs he left to work for health insurer independent blue cross before returning to work as a journalist that revolving door between the president he are. as the government is causing real concern about what the long term effects could be if the influx of spin doctors take over the message machine completely where there is very little journalism being done. you create some dangerous circumstances for citizenry for democracy itself i'll go straight to questions white house spokesman jay carney worked for twenty years as a journalist for time magazine now he's president obama's spokes person former

broadcaster and columnist tony snow went on to serve as a spokesperson for president bush and jamie rubin went from the state department under president clinton to executive editor at driebergen. so common so it is a common practice and no one no one is questioning or writing or in a time when i can fly a car all thin one in the sea and the spin machine works overtime to. home the question becomes can a meaningful for the seat actually survive. washington christine r.t. . earlier i spoke with someone who would neither identify himself as a hack or a flack entirely documentary filmmaker jason berman he also describes himself as a guerrilla journalist and as that ever changing media landscape keeps evolving i asked him you know yellow tabloid journalism and on yellow journalism struggling to

make money increasingly relying on publicists losing their ranks or politics as we saw in that last story i asked if he reflects or thinks the reflect a new wave of journalism which is not beholden to any p.r. machine here's what he said. well really it's not. like i still think it will last. the problem is that the traditional media is really been exposed as nothing more than what is a little well they should say so what is public relations i think you need to go back to their turn comes from because the man was the father of this if he's the author of propaganda in their book propaganda because it is a book a lot you don't even know that he exposes the fact that the people that are actually pulling the strings were largely and for people that we've never heard and this is just being exposed more and more as being lied to by our government and the

media and yes so many confirmed cases over the past. in all in what we consider journalism this is like. strong williams was being to promote no child left behind the bush administration all the way in. and case in of my where there cuban five were basically being smeared by might and all american instead of ok they think that you're talking about journalism. largely a product of the internet the internet super important and you're going about it a different way you're not relying on a p.r. spiel you're you're looking for a different and there are different for thin but what about how. do you have the time do you have the resources to check your story. well absolutely and in large part what we do is scan through the mainstream media and the sources there

are reporting you know the same people look all over will find will say i did get them on the record or and or you're seeing us and people like ben berman michael timothy they're all these people you see in the mainstream media the difference is now one click away not only anchored home on your own but literally on your telephone to new stories so people want that institution permission so it's going to move towards the web anyway the difference is they don't have advertisers that are just know the ins and sometimes billions of dollars in contracts to promo a certain view that's what a public relations stand there really isn't again seeing more and more of the whether it's fox news and the send you see c.n.n. they all have to hold corporate sponsors about a documentary filmmaker and a relative or a left ok for.